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THE LEARNY BIT
Starting this wordy email thing was easily the best decision I’ve ever made as a writer. My head’s almost always in client work, so having this weekly window to write anything I want has been sincerely game-changing.
Whoa.
Sincerely game-changing?
Who says that?
Certainly not me. Certainly not you.
Certainly not any human I know will have ever said sincerely-game changing.
And that’s what writing this weekly email has allowed me to do. Free myself of unnaturalness. Rid my brain of many thoughtless cliches. Ditch the get-out-of-jail-free-phrases.
I said the same to today’s sponsor Beth. It’s helped me be more me. And being more me has helped me ditch the stuff that bores me to fucking tears.
So I no longer write much long-form stuff for clients. Never really liked it anyway. Almost everything now is the top-level stuff, concepts, the big idea, headlines, subheadlines, straplines, snappy website paragraphs. That sorta thing.
And as I’ve made my thinking more focussed, I’ve had to get more brutal with the ideas I come up with.
Let’s take ads. I’ve been writing loads of them lately.
Coming up with headlines is the easy bit (especially if you’ve taken Dan Nelken’s Writing Under Pressure
course). Gauging how effective they are before you present them to the client? Notsomuch.
So after I’ve come up with a headline and subline, I run it through a three-question filter in my head.
Let’s call it the HOW TO STOP THAT FEELING OF DAY-RUINING EMBARRASSMENT/ AWKWARDNESS WHEN YOU PRESENT AN IDEA TO THE CLIENT AND THEIR FACE LOOKS LIKE IT’S FROZEN ON THE ZOOM, BUT THEN THEY BLINK AND YOU REALISE THEY HAVEN’T FROZEN, THEY JUST HAVEN’T GOT A FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOUR AD MEANS, SO YOU IMMEDIATELY START DOUBTING YOUR CREATIVE CAPABILITIES TEST.
It was that or the ADCID TEST.
I try not to be too conscious of these three questions while I’m writing, because they can cloud your thinking. But by answering them honestly at the end, they give me a decent idea of how effective my ads will be.
Oh, and you must ask yourself these questions in this exact order…
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1. Will this grab people’s attention?
Start by putting yourself in the shoes of the target audience. Not just in a wanky persona type of way. Think of the precise moment a living breathing human being first sets eyes on your ad.
>>> Where are they?
>>> What are they doing?
>>> How are they feeling?
>>> What’s going through their mind?
>>> What’s going on around them?
Let’s imagine you’re writing an ad about van insurance, which will be shown on digital billboards across UK’s 20 biggest towns.
Your target audience is a plumber called Carl, from Blackpool. It’s February, so the weather’s grey and overcast. Maybe even raining. It’s his busiest time of year, so he’s rushed off his feet. Even commuting to this next job feels like a battle against the clock. And to top it all off, he’s stuck in traffic. Then just as he glances up from his steering wheel, and peers through his windscreen while the wipers are on max speed, your ad is shown on the digital billboard across the road.
Is what you’ve written bold enough, intriguing enough, surprising enough, thought provoking enough, weird enough or funny enough to make Carl notice it?
If the answer is an honest no, scrap it.
If it’s a yes or maybe, proceed to question 2.
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2. Will they understand the message?
If your ad makes it past the first filter, it’s probably because you’ve gone for a big unignorable benefit, an audacious claim, an interesting metaphor, an intro to a story, or a phrase they’ve never seen before.
But the attention bit is the easy bit.
I could write BIG DANGLY ELEPHANT BALLS in massive 500pt type on a billboard, and while it’d probably make Carl smile, and even do the rounds on Twitter, it’s probably not going to sell van insurance without a subheader that puts it into context.
If the message is too hard for your client - who lives and breathes their brand - to decipher when they first see it, then the chances of Carl making the link to van insurance is close to zero.
I mentioned the importance of clarity over cleverness last week, and this is really a clincher. If they don’t “get it” in the first few seconds, they'll switch their attention elsewhere.
That doesn’t mean you still can’t go mad with your headline. You just need the subheadline beneath it to make total sense.
I've had a stab at the elephant balls ad a bit further down. I can kinda see it working for a disruptive brand called Jean-Claude Van Insurance or something.
So again, be brutal… is what you’ve written easy for Carl to read, unambiguous, hard to misinterpret and digestible?
If the answer is an honest no, scrap it.
If it’s a yes or maybe, proceed to question 3.
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3. Will they give a fuck?
By this point, you're confident your message commands attention. And it feels clear. But does it leave Carl with any reason to do this?…
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